Best of 2025
Requiem for the Snake of Maidan
Holidays Records is on fire! Hot on the heels of their recent incredible vinyl releases of the Italian sound artist and musician Ezio Piermattei’s “Gran trotto” and the duo Acchiappashpirt’s “Ninulla”, they return with one of their most important and captivating releases to date: Hartmut Geerken’s “Requiem for the Snake of Maidan”, a mind-blowing body of archival recordings from the 1970s, made on a stony ridge in the Hindukush mountains of Afghanistan, encountering the artist locked in a sprawl…
Antigone
Big tip! Antigone is Eiko Ishibashi’s latest musical masterwork, one rife with chilling speculations for the future calling from inside her own head. Out March 28th, it marks Eiko’s first “traditional” songcraft album — that is, with lyrics and singing — since 2018’s acclaimed The Dream My Bones Dream, arriving on the heels of her celebrated soundtracks for Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s films. Within Antigone, Eiko teases out images from a dystopia not unlike the one we’ve already got. Hers is suffused wi…
Arctic Summer
"The richness of these recordings cannot be overstated." — A Closer Listen
Europe in Flames
200 copies. CD wallet with 8 page booklet including photos from a scrapbook, found in Willem de Ridder’s archive. The word Fanatic comes from the Latin fanum, temple. A fanatic is someone possessed, by God or the Devil. From 1985 until 1989 Willem de Ridder, Hessel Veldman, Cora Emens and Nick Nicole were the members of post-art ensemble Fanatic (or later FNTC). Willem and Hessel already worked together in the late 70s and early 80s on various radio shows and performed with musicians like Alvin …
Voiceless Mass
Big Tip! Listening is the foundation of Raven Chacon’s (b. 1977) wide-ranging artistic practice. “I am a listener,” he simply declares, but the attention he gives to sound is complex and vast, encompassing far more than what is immediately audible. From his earliest works, Chacon has been dedicated to amplifying the unheard, calling attention to what is absent or unknown. Although Chacon classifies the compositions on this recording as chamber music, all three of these works “zigzag” through his…
So Far
Bomb! **Remastered 180g LP, includes reproductions of the original nine art prints and insert** After the poor sales of their debut album, Faust's “So Far” , originally released in 1972, presents the more commercial and accessible side of the legendary German krautrock band without giving up their advanced and experimental personality. It is a perfect album to begin exploring the group's discography, featuring one of their most well-known songs, “It's a Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl”, and is consider…
Flowers Are Blooming In Antarctica
Delivering a career-defining statement from the Italian electroacoustic composer and saxophone player, Laura Agnusdei, Maple Death returns with “Flowers are Blooming in Antarctica” - a startling, multifaceted journey through imagistic sonorous worlds resting at the juncture of spiritual jazz, fourth-world minimalism, tropical electronics, tribal futurism, and rigorous electroacoustic experimentalism - rooted in thrilling ecological ideas, that marks the launch of Opale, a new suite of releases c…
Transportées
300 copies. Marie Guérin (aka Marie de la Nuit, meaning Marie of the Night) is a sound artist. Since 2001, she has been manipulating field recordings, radio archives, traces left on the airwaves by "hertzian ghosts". A mixture of voices, textures, grains, anecdotal sounds, her work questions the sound heritage, its supports and the traces left on these supports; her music passes from radiophonic grammar to music. --- "Transportées is an electroacoustic work. From archaic to electronic trance, a …
Sweet England
Huge Tip! Recorded 67 years ago, reissued in Shirley Collins's 90th year in this universe. 'Sweet England' along with its sister album 'False True Lovers', was recorded in the spring of 1958 when I was twenty-two years old. I had been living for the previous two years in London with Alan Lomax, the American folklorist, working for him as editorial assistant on his book The Folk Songs of North America and on his field recordings from America, Great Britain, Italy and Spain. The tracks that make u…
Love
* Edition of 100 copies, silk-screened cover, hand numbered and intended for musicians and their families. High thickness cardboard with opaque laminated cover. Comes with a printed insert. Very Few copies available * Founded in 1969 by the pianist Ole Mathiessen, the bassist Henrik Hove, the saxophonist Jesper Nehammer, and drummer Jon Finsen, Tordenskjolds Soldater was one of the great - albeit short-lived - projects in Copenhagen’s thriving scene of free improvisation and jazz of the late 196…
Love / Action A B C E (2LP Bundle)
Returning with some serious fire for their first batch of releases in 2025, Alga Marghen newly launched Formalibera, dedicated to free improvisation, drops two absolutely mind-blowing, limited-edition LPs, drawing upon never before issued recordings by Tordenskjolds Soldater and The Contemporary Jazz Quintet, two of the most important groups working in Copenhagen's bristling context of avant-garde jazz at the end of the 1960 and early 1970s. Both hugely historically significant and creatively vi…
Action A b C E
* Edition of 300 copies. High thickness cardboard with opaque laminated cover. Comes with a printed insert. * Founded initially as the The Beckerlee Quartet sometime towards the late 1950s and early '60s, a time during which time they went through various lineup changes before morphing into The Contemporary Jazz Quartet, in 1962 they began playing the Vingaarden club in central Copenhagen as one of the earliest European adopters of the emerging movement of free jazz. It was there that they came …
Phardah - Humans and Beings
Huge Tip! Free Jazz band with a psychedelic touch, Phardah, is set to release their debut album Humans and Beings on the 2nd of May, 2025. The band features veterans of the Finnish experimental music and Free Jazz scene: saxophonist Sami Pekkola, double bassist Eero Tikkanen, and electric guitarist Topias Tiheäsalo, along with the younger generation drummer Veeti Hietala. The album was recorded and mixed by Teemu Markkula, known from the band Death Hawks. The album consists of two long pieces. V…
Keyhole Mouth
Tip! 150 copies limited release
Xing presents the new LP Keyhole Mouth by Silvia Costa and Claudio Rocchetti, seventeenth release of Xong collection - artist records. The release is on white vinyl, in a limited and numbered edition of 150 copies, including a collector's edition of 20 copies, each accompanied by a keyhole of European and North American manufacture (from the 17th century till today) with the application of an original pen on canvas miniature by Silvia Costa.
Keyhole Mouth is the s…
White Phosphorus (Chris Connelly plays Throbbing Gristle)
Huge Tip! There is so much that we at Dirter could say about the legend that is Chris Connelly performing his takes on the music of the equally legendary TG, but this time we’re going to leave it in the words of the man himself. This record goes ahead with the blessing of the surviving members of Throbbing Gristle, Chris Carter & Cosey Fanni Tutti.
“Having carved a twisted career with behemoths Ministry and Revolting Cocks over the past 40 years, starting life with the formidable Fini Tribe and …
Kwaidan
2025 Repress. Meitei (冥丁) is a Japanese artist from Hiroshima, who started out as a freelance composer, making various kinds of music across genres. Having done it for eight years, his goal was to eventually release his own original music as an artist. Living in Kyoto for the past two years has deeply influenced his current sound, which is a focus on musically crafting a “Japanese mood” called Meitei (冥丁 (thus, his name). Rich in history, Meitei wanted to borrow this lost “Japanese mood” and inc…
Irma
In 1977, for Brian Eno’s Obscure Records, I made a version of Irma. These notes arise from that experience and explore how the piece can be performed. Irma is an unusual score—printed on a single 50cm x 50cm sheet. Its notation consists of verbal fragments from Tom Phillips' A Humument, referencing “libretto,” “decor and mise-en-scène,” or “sounds.” These categories are arranged separately, with stave notation at the bottom. At first glance, it appears indeterminate—requiring preparation before …
Machine Music
The Machines, created between 1967-1972, mark a shift from the traditional narrative style of Gavin Bryars other works. »I define a machine as a structured process that governs musical actions within a specific sound world, shaping how listeners perceive it. For example, Welsh Rarebit is a Machine that manipulates how bread and cheese are heard.« »Autumn Countdown Machine« features six pairs of bass melody instruments, conducted by percussionists who adjust a bell-metronome's timing, creating in…
Ensemble Pieces
A split album by Christopher Hobbs, John Adams, and Gavin Bryars, released in 1975 as the second title on Brian Eno's imprint Obscure. The album includes two pieces by Hobbs and one each by Adams and Bryars. Side A opens with the experimental compositions of Hobbs, followed by Adams’ spoken-word and orchestral work, while Side B concludes with Bryars’ dissonant, frontier-classical ambient piece, featuring contributions from Brian Eno and Derek Bailey. "Aran" and "McCrimmon Will Never Return" (19…
Raoul De Smet
Big tip! *300 copies limited edition* First LP in the ‘Signature Series’, a small new series in the Metaphon catalog, documenting previously unreleased archive works of less known composers. Metaphon presents their ‘signature’ in the most personal and elementary way.
Raoul De Smet (1936), mainly known for his numerous instrumental and chamber music works, started composing in the early 1960’s. Between 1974 and 1989 he also recorded several electro-acoustic compositions at the IPEM in Ghent, one …